BOB ABERNETHY, host: Like many others in the nation, faith groups are assessing the impact of this week’s election. According to exit polls, President Obama won a slight majority of Catholic voters overall, thanks largely to strong support from Latino Catholics. Mitt Romney won the white Catholic vote by an almost 20-point margin. Almost 80 percent of evangelicals who voted voted for Romney. Black Protestants went overwhelmingly for Obama, as did the vast majority of Jews. But the biggest share of Obama’s faith coalition was voters who say they aren’t affiliated with any religion.

Steve Schneck was co-chair of Catholics for Obama. He says while issues like abortion, religious liberty, and gay marriage were important, in the end it was the economy that tipped the scale for the president.

STEVE SCHNECK: All of these religious issues, while they are important to religious voters, I think, even among religious voters they ranked these issues a little further down on the spectrum.

ABERNETHY: Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition admitted that a massive mobilization among religious conservatives wasn’t enough to offset the number of women, young people, and minorities who voted Democratic.

RALPH REED: I think we need to do a better job of not looking like, you know, your daddy’s religious right. You know, we have to be as a movement younger. We have to be more diverse ethnically.

ABERNETHY: Voters also decided several key ballot initiatives. For the first time ever, measures to approve same-sex marriage passed by referendum in Maine, Maryland, and Washington State. And voters in Minnesota rejected a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage. In Massachusetts, a measure to legalize physician-assisted suicide was narrowly defeated. In California, voters decided not to abolish the death penalty.

With all the acrimony around the election, many religious leaders called for a new spirit of civility. More than 700 churches held special Election Day Communion services. Organizers said they wanted to refocus allegiance to God and work for justice beyond the ballot box.

Now, more on this week’s presidential election: I’m joined by Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program; Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service; and Rachel Zoll, national religion writer for the Associated Press, who’s with us from New York. Kim, underneath all the data do you see a message?

KIM LAWTON: Well, there’s definitely a message for, I think, the Republican Party and the religious right—that those old faith-based coalitions that won elections aren’t winning those elections any more. I mean, you had—evangelicals did an unprecedented mobilization. They came out to the polls, and they voted more for Republicans than they have in previous elections even. You had, when you break out by race, almost 60 percent of white Catholics going for Romney and still those two together weren’t enough to tip the election, and that’s different than previous elections, and believe me that’s making many of the people inside the religious right, but also inside the Republican Party, taking notice.

ABERNETHY: Rachel in New York: did you see any pattern or message in all that data?

RACHEL ZOLL: I think one of the messages is a growing acceptance for Mormons by the Christian conservatives. The—we saw at the beginning of this election, people thought that Mitt Romney’s faith, his Mormonism, was going to keep evangelicals from the polls. Now we don’t have final numbers on the size of the electorate, but it’s clear that he won— Governor Romney won the overwhelming percentage of white evangelical votes. They did vote for him despite theological differences.

ABERNETHY: And how do you interpret that?

ZOLL: That Mormons have, in a growing way—are gaining acceptance in the United States.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, what did you see?

KEVIN ECKSTROM: I think one of the big take-aways, not just on religion, but just generally is the growth of the Hispanics. I think what, 71 percent of Hispanics voted for President Obama, and that’s not just a message for the Republicans or the Democrats, but I think also for evangelicals that the coalition that they’ve always relied on, primarily white, primarily older, primarily male, isn’t going to cut it anymore. And so I think you’re going to see, perhaps, a bit more evangelical activism on immigration, which they’ve already been doing, but I think this election will really kind of ramp that up.

LAWTON: And it’s an interesting question.

ABERNETHY: And they’re talking about that coming up soon.

LAWTON: Exactly, exactly but that’s the question. Religious right leaders are saying, okay, we recognize we need to open up a little bit. The Republican Party recognizes they need to reach out. But how do you do that? Do you need to change the message? And I think that’s one question that people are taking away different answers on. Is the answer to be less extreme, or less dogmatic on issues like abortion and gay marriage? Will that appeal to more people? Now, Latinos tend to be more conservative on social issues, but they don’t tend to vote, by and large, on the social issues, so how exactly do you broaden that tent?

ABERNETHY: Rachel, you’ve had things to say about the difference between changing the language of something that you want to talk about and changing the position. Fill us in on that.

ZOLL: Well, that’s one of the fears I think among a lot of Christian conservatives, religious conservatives in the Republican Party—that the lesson that the party will take away from this is that they should not be speaking about social issues and that this emphasis on social issues is actually something that’s going to hurt them. Now the counter-argument that a lot of the different groups are making, including the anti-abortion groups, is that we had—they had a moderate nominee, Mitt Romney, for the job who did not talk enough about social issues, and that is one of the arguments I’m hearing.

ECKSTROM: But if you look, though, at social issues, if you rope in homosexuality with that, along with abortion that Rachel mentioned, I mean, we had a clear win for gay rights across the board almost in this election. So I think, yeah, you can talk more about abortion or homosexuality, but I think the numbers and the trends, at least on the gay question, maybe abortion’s a little different, but on the gay question I think what we saw this time is that it doesn’t have the same salience and the same power or even the same level of acceptance that many religious conservatives might think.

ABERNETHY: What does that say to you—that the country is becoming much more tolerant?

ECKSTROM: Yes, I think so. And I think, you know, we used to talk about the Will-and-Grace Effect back in the ‘90s, you know, where people learned about, you know, gay people, but now you have shows where you have two gay dads, and you’ve got a transgender character on “Glee.” The society is moving much faster than politics or even the religious institutions on this question.

ABERNETHY: Rachel, I wanted to ask you where do the election returns leave the relationship between the Catholic bishops and the president of the United States?

ZOLL: That’s the question. Things got very bitter this year between the bishops and President Obama when he enacted the birth control mandate that was part of the health care—his health care reform. He and Cardinal Dolan, who is the president of the U.S. bishops conference, once actually had a very friendly relationship. Instead, they now—you hear bishops very vehemently condemning President Obama throughout the election for his policies, saying he’s dangerous for the country and dangerous for religious freedom itself. It’s not at all clear how they’re going to work together going forward. One of the other problems that the bishops have is that when they went to Republicans who appeared to be more sympathetic and open to their situation, or their argument on the religious liberty question, ultimately did not do anything for them and dropped the issue.

LAWTON: And there’s some interesting, also, I think—tensions within the laity, the Catholic community, that we saw come out in this election. I mean, we saw outside Catholic players on both sides. The bishops were very active especially highlighting issues of religious freedom, abortion, marriage, traditional marriage. You also saw the “Nuns on the Bus” and people from the more progressive end in the Catholic Church raising issues about economic justice and budget concerns, and there were a lot of divisions, and frankly I saw a lot of vitriol in the Catholic laity, on the blogs and everything, between those two wings which—those differences have always been there, differences of emphasis maybe within the Church, but some of that vitriol really seemed to bubble up in this election.

ABERNETHY: So, the Joe Biden wing and the—

LAWTON: The Joe Biden Catholics and Paul Ryan Catholics, and they didn’t agree on a whole lot this time around.

ECKSTROM: But I think at the end of the day, Cardinal Dolan who heads the bishops conference is, in a lot, a lot of ways, in the same position as Speaker Boehner in the House, and they’re going to have to work with this president whether they like it or not. They tried maybe to defeat him. It didn’t work. But I think Cardinal Dolan at his heart is a pragmatist and wants to get something done, and the question is how they’re going to work together. I think they’ll be forced to work together.

ABERNETHY: Everyone talks about the message being, okay, you guys, go back to Washington, make some compromises, get something done. It’s not clear exactly what’s to be done although everyone agrees immigration is one of the things that’s very high. But a lot of people see this fiscal cliff coming, the need for Congress and the president to get together to prevent big, big cuts in spending and big, big increases in taxes. So how can the religious communities help in that?

LAWTON: Well, it’s interesting because religious people have been and will continue to be involved sort of in both ends of that debate, and for each side it’s a moral issue. So, you have Catholics, including the Catholic bishops, saying we need to help the poor. Budget cuts can hurt the poor and that, that’s a matter of belief, religious belief, and conscience for them. You have religious conservatives using moral language to talk about the debt, and it’s immoral to leave a debt to our children, and they’re pretty strong on that, and the press releases that I’ve been getting after the election certainly didn’t mention compromise as a religious value. They—all sides talked about staying strong on their particular positions.

ZOLL: One of the interesting things that this brings up is that this is an area where the bishops, the Catholic bishops, can work closely with the Obama administration, and I suspect that the Obama administration would very much welcome it. I don’t think anyone benefits, and they don’t feel that anyone benefits from the tensions between them, and the bishops have obviously not only a theology but an incredible track record in terms of supporting poor, the poor people in terms of charities, and they are very concerned about these social issues, and next week when they meet they will also be discussing the economy and poverty.

ABERNETHY: Our time is up, I’m sorry to say. Rachel Zoll in New York, thank you very much. Kim Lawton here, Kevin Eckstrom here in Washington, thanks to all of you.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/11/09/november-9-2012-election-2012-religion-and-the-results/13803/feed/4E. J. Dionne: “Religion is Always There”http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/06/27/e-j-dionne-religion-is-always-there/11535/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2012/06/27/e-j-dionne-religion-is-always-there/11535/#disqus_threadWed, 27 Jun 2012 20:20:13 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=11535Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent says, "Religion is always there below the surface in our politics." More →

]]>The Washington Post columnist and author of Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent talks religion and politics with correspondent Kim Lawton and says, “Religion is always there below the surface in our politics”: Will Catholic voters be moved by the US bishops’ appeals to religious liberty? Can President Obama make any inroads with evangelical conservatives? What role will Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith play? Have the Democrats backed away from working with religious voters?

BOB ABERRNETHY, host: In a coordinated effort, 43 Catholic institutions filed federal lawsuits to stop the Obama administration’s plan to require free coverage of contraceptive services. Among the plaintiffs were Catholic dioceses, hospitals, social service agencies, and universities, including Notre Dame. They say the requirement would infringe on their religious freedom. Supporters of the coverage plan say a proposed compromise would avoid religious liberty concerns, but the Catholic bishops reject that compromise. Meanwhile, a new Gallup Poll found that 82 percent of US Catholics believe birth control is morally acceptable. Fifteen percent said it was morally wrong.

Joining me now are Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, and Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. Kevin, Kim, welcome. Kevin, what do you make of this?

KEVIN ECKSTROM: Well, the Catholic institutions that filed suit are basically fighting over whether or not they have to provide birth control coverage to their employees in their insurance plans. That’s what the root of this is all about. The fact that they, 43 groups, came together and filed a dozen lawsuits shows that they are trying to come at this with the full weight of the church, to show that this is not just an isolated diocese or a small group, but that the whole range of the church is really upset about this. And it also signals, I think, that they don’t see any other alternative, that they don’t see a political compromise in the works with the White House. They, I think, in a lot of ways, feel like they have no other choice but to go to court.

KIM LAWTON: And they feel that the compromise that the White House has offered which some more progressive, liberal, moderate Catholics say that’s okay— these groups are saying no, it’s not okay. It doesn’t cover us, and for them it’s a matter of religious freedom, and they very clearly said, this is not about contraception, really. It’s about religious freedom and our ability to practice our beliefs and the government not telling us what to do, what we have to do, and the government not also saying who is a religious group that qualifies for an exemption from the policy.

ABERNETHY: And how representative do you think these groups are?

ECKSTROM: Well, they’re representative in that it’s a broad range. I mean, it’s schools, it’s groups, it’s dioceses, it’s big dioceses and small ones. But it’s only a handful of dioceses, I think, you know, less than 12 dioceses out of 200 or so in the country, so the vast majority of local dioceses did not join this suit.

ABERNETHY: But that doesn’t mean that they like, what’s going on.

ECKSTROM: Right. And a lot of them support what the bishops as a whole are trying to do, but there is some dissension in the ranks about what the best legal strategy is, and a lot of people, a lot of bishops, or some bishops think that this was a bit premature.

ABERNETHY: The fury of the opposition and the breadth of it suggest that the administration might have miscalculated when they presented this in the first place. Do you see that?

LAWTON: Well, the first policy, the first iteration of this policy got very widespread disapproval from a lot of Catholics, and we’ve heard that inside the administration there were people saying, warning the administration that this would not be popular. Now, more people, more Catholics have approved this, the compromise that the Obama administration tried to work out, but there are some suggestions that maybe they weren’t prepared for this and that the religious outreach wasn’t what it should have been in order to figure out how to maneuver this.

ABERNETHY: Quickly, you agree?

ECKSTROM: Yeah, and a lot of Catholic bishops said that they were basically blindsided by this. They were never consulted beforehand and say hey, this is what we’re planning to do, what do you think? Can we find something that works? Instead, they were just handed this and said take it or leave it, and the bishops basically have said no, we’re not going to take it.

ABERNETHY: Right in the middle of an election year.

ECKSTROM: Right. And there is some concern both within the bishops’ conference but also without that the bishops risk appearing to be anti-Obama or perhaps too Republican and that the timing on this needs to be very, very sensitive.

]]>Saints play different—and deeply personal—roles for Catholics. Watch more of correspondent Kim Lawton’s interview with Rev. Gabriel O’Donnell, O.P, postulator for the sainthood causes of Father Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, and Rose Hawthorne, nineteenth-century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter, who cared for low-income cancer patients. Also watch more from Rev. James Martin, S.J., author of the book My Life with the Saints.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: And now we look at the election results and what they mean with David Gibson, religion writer for PoliticsDaily.com, and with Kim Lawton, our managing editor. Kim, you’ve looked at the patterns. What did you see?

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: Well, not surprisingly Republicans made gains among all religious groups, but there were some pretty significant gains. White Protestants voted Republican overwhelmingly. They’ve done that, they usually do that in elections, but even more so this time. The interesting thing for me was around Catholics. In the last two congressional elections, overall Catholics have favored the Democratic candidates. But this time around they went Republican and by significant margins. Catholics have really become in some ways a swing voting bloc. Obviously there are some who always vote Republican, some who always vote Democratic, but there’s this group who keeps swinging, and this time around they really swung Republican.

ABERNETHY: David, why did so many Catholics switch so much from Democrats to Republicans?

DAVID GIBSON (Religion Writer, PoliticsDaily.com): Well, Bob, I think you, know, the governing issues here driving the election were the bread and butter, kitchen table issues of economics and the size of the federal government, and Catholics were swayed by those as well. But I think also there was, you know, a real degree of moral issues going on here—the debate over abortion funding in health care reform A lot of the things that the Christian right were hammering the Obama administration on for a long time—those also came into play. There was a sense that the Obama administration had been pushed over to the cultural left, and that really made a lot of Catholics very anxious and uneasy.

LAWTON: You know, a lot of people say, well, of course these religious groups went Republican because the whole electorate went Republican more so this time around, but I’ve been talking to some strategists who crunch the numbers, and they said, well, yes, that was a pattern throughout the electorate. Religious voters, especially Protestants and Catholics, voted more Republican at much bigger rates and margins than the general electorate.

ABERNETHY: And why?

LAWTON: Well, you know, David said there’s a lot of different issues why. People also say that the Republicans were doing a lot more outreach and specifically targeting some of these faith communities, and there was criticism this time around that the Democrats didn’t do that as much.

ABERNETHY: David, why do you think that was? Two years ago we were all, you all were talking a lot about Democratic outreach to religious voters and how well they were doing. Why not this time?

GIBSON: Good question, Bob. I think it’s really puzzling in many respects why the administration and the Democratic Party apparatus kind of punted on that religious outreach that had been so successful, that was really, I think, to a degree shifting the political culture where you had religious voters. The biggest predictor of how you’ll vote is church-going. Regular church-goers are going to go Republican more than they are going to go Democratic. In 2006, and certainly in 2008, Democrats had begun to shift that. They really, in the last two years, kind of gave up on that. I don’t know if they got complacent or whatever. But there’s some grumbling certainly on the religious left about the lack of Democratic outreach to religious voters, and you saw the results on Tuesday.

ABERNETHY: What about the Tea Party?

LAWTON: Well, clearly there was a big religious base in the Tea Party. Depending on who asked the question and what question they asked, almost half of people who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement are religious conservatives, so that was a big factor in helping the Tea Party push some of the Republican candidates to victory. Not all of them did win, but it certainly has energized people on the religious right.

ABERNETHY: David, let me turn your attention now to the lame duck session of Congress coming up and particularly to the new Congress coming in, in January. What do you see them doing or failing to do that would be of particular interest to the religious community?

GIBSON: Well, I think two things in the lame duck Congress could possibly come up. One is immigration reform. Harry Reid on the eve of his election said that he was contemplating bringing that up. He said he would bring comprehensive immigration reform up for a vote during the lame duck session. Again, how is that going to work out? How would that play politically? One thing, referring to the Catholic vote that you have to break out, is that Latinos went very strongly for the Democratic Party this time, so you’ve really got, in a sense, two Catholic votes emerging and two votes overall—the white Catholic vote and the Latino Catholic vote. The other issue that could come up in the lame duck is the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, and the Democrats may try and formally rescind that. Those could be two hot-button issues that would get some immediate push back from the right, but also could be supported by the religious left.

LAWTON: And I’m fascinated by some of the battles that could be shaping up in that, because while religious conservatives certainly are concerned about “don’t ask don’t tell,” they don’t want to see that policy changed, but on the other hand when we are talking about immigration, some evangelicals have, although they are fiscally conservative, some evangelicals have been supportive of some immigration reform. And so while the Tea Party really wants to focus on fiscal issues, and on those issues a lot of evangelicals and other religious conservatives are right on board with that conservative fiscal outlook, when it comes to these social issues or things like immigration, some evangelicals might want to support that, and so there are some complexities there.

ABERNETHY: Do you see anything coming up regarding right to life?

LAWTON: Well, I think that that’s always an issue that’s important to religious conservatives. Certainly on the health care bill, that played a role in terms of is there going to be funding for abortion? Or even the Catholic bishops were concerned about possible funding for birth control. So those issues came into play there and are likely to continue as those debates come up again.

ABERNETHY: David, how do you see that?

GIBSON: I think Kim’s exactly right, and I think there’s going to be a big Republican push to repeal health care reform, or to de-fund certain aspects of it, to undermine it in some way, shape, or form. On the other hand, we could have a couple of court cases in the pipeline that could provide a definitive answer to this question of whether there is funding for abortion in the health care reform bill, which experts say there isn’t but folks on the religious right believe that there is. If there’s a definitive answer one way or another that could really be a game-changer as well on that issue.

ABERNETHY: So many people looking at the election returns see a demand for civility, a demand that the Republicans and the Democrats start trying to work together better. To what extent do you see any of that coming?

LAWTON: Well, I hear that. I hear, especially in the religious community, people hoping that there might be some civility. But when you talk to some of the activists and people who were involved in the campaigns, you know, to me what I hear from them is common ground means you vote like I want you to vote, or you vote like I think, and not let’s find a compromise. I don’t hear people in a mood for compromise. I do also hear in the religious moderates and left sort of a renewed commitment to working for their social justice agenda, and so there’s still going to be some political battling ahead.

GIBSON: Kim’s exactly right. I think that the folks on the religious right and the real strong religious right lobby organizations have basically said that the next two years is going to be about 2012. So they are positioning for the next election, because they see that they can only really get their agenda across if they win the Senate and the White House as well. We are in a real winner-takes-all kind of political culture here.

A senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life says atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Mormons stand our for their knowledge of world religions other than Christianity, while Mormons and evangelical Protestants do best on questions about the Bible and Christianity. Interview by Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly associate producer for news Julie Mashack. Edited by Fabio Lomelino.Click here to take Pew’s religious knowledge quiz.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the CORE/El Centro natural healing center in Milwaukee, Sister Madeline Gianforte is using Reiki on one of her clients. In this Eastern healing technique, practitioners place their hands on or above someone in an effort to enhance the body’s flow of energy. They say that can lead to physical and spiritual healing.

SISTER MADELINE GIANFORTE (CORE/El Centro): As a practitioner, I’m just facilitating that energy. But you are doing your own healing in the sense of connecting to the divine and the healing that happens within.

LAWTON: Gianforte is a nun with the Sisters of Saint Agnes. She’s also a trained Reiki master. She says Reiki fits well with her faith.

Sister Madeline Gianforte

GIANFORTE: It’s an incredibly spiritual, prayerful experience for me. It calms the inner part of my being so much that I can tap that deepest place, the core place of who I am.

LAWTON: But the US Catholic bishops say Reiki is superstition, and they’ve urged Catholics not to provide or support it. Reverend Tom Weinandy is executive director of the bishops’ doctrine committee.

REV. TOM WEINANDY (US Conference of Catholic Bishops): The problem that we had with Reiki, in the end, was that we felt it sort of fell between the crack, that it was neither really a medical or scientific technique nor was it a religious technique that was compatible with Christianity.

LAWTON: Reiki, with its strong emphasis on the spiritual, was developed in Japan in the early 20th century. Using various hand positions, practitioners help their clients access what they call a universal life force, a spiritual or divine energy force. They claim that energy force can reduce stress and accelerate the body’s natural healing process. A favorite of New Age centers, Reiki is also increasingly used in hospitals and medical clinics.

GIANFORTE: I did a lot of Reiki with my mom when she had cancer, and she was very, very sick with chemo and radiation, and one of the greatest things for her was that it alleviated a lot of the side-effects and the symptoms of radiation and chemo, and then ultimately in her final stages it kind of allowed her to peacefully go.

LAWTON: Gianforte helped found the nonsectarian CORE/El Centro as a place where everyone, but especially low-income people, could have access to alternative medicine and natural healing techniques. Reiki is one of many practices here based on an Eastern holistic philosophy focusing on the body, the mind and the spirit.

GIANFORTE: If the spirit isn’t addressed, and only the body is, a complete healing won’t be possible.

LAWTON: Lauri Lumby Schmidt uses Reiki in her ministry as a spiritual director.

LAURI LUMBY SCHMIDT (Authentic Freedom Ministries): There is a wide range of things that people can experience, but it does tend to be much more profound than just straight relaxation.

LAWTON: Schmidt did her Reiki training or “attunements” with Catholic nuns, who she says, taught it from a Christian perspective.

SCHMIDT: When I really look at Jesus’ ministry and what he was all about, it was about healing, and he empowered his disciples to do the same thing. He commissioned them to go out and heal.

LAWTON: But the Catholic bishops say they received more and more questions about Reiki, so they commissioned a study, and last year released guidelines which said “a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition.” And the guidelines concluded “it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health care facilities and retreat centers, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy.”

WEINANDY: God is God, and human beings are human beings, and we can petition God, but we can’t manipulate him, and we felt that this was what was happening in the context of Reiki, that the person learned how to be in touch with the divine cosmic forces such that they could now manipulate it through a laying on of hands or a massage or something that the person could be healed.

LAWTON: Many Reiki supporters were taken aback by the statement’s tone.

GIANFORTE: It’s not a religion. It’s just a practice that assists people in connecting more deeply to the more spiritual soul places within themselves, so I was pretty surprised by that.

LAWTON: The document said the Church recognizes two kinds of healing: natural means through the practice of medicine and healing by God’s divine grace. In the Christian tradition, there is the sacramental anointing with oil and the laying on of hands.

WEINANDY: Christians can pray for one another, lay hands on a sick person, and ask Jesus to heal them, but you’re not channeling divine energies through your hands.

LAWTON: Weinandy says sometimes individuals or even places such as the pilgrimage site in Lourdes, France appear to have a special gift of healing. But he says physical healing is never guaranteed, and it’s always up to the will of God.

WEINANDY: It’s not that he loves one person more than the other, but we don’t know why the Lord would heal one and not another person, but it is a mystery.

LAWTON: Reiki practitioners deny that they are trying to manipulate God.

Rev. Tom Weinandy

SCHMIDT: You can tell when you are facilitating and sharing Reiki with someone that you are not guiding it, you know. You can tell that there’s a higher power that is doing the work.

LAWTON: Schmidt says she chooses to give the credit to God.

SCHMIDT: For me, Reiki is another form of prayer. It’s allowing myself to be a vessel through which then God’s healing can then be experienced by the person that is receiving the Reiki.

WEINANDY: If you try to plug Reiki into Christianity, what you’re saying is Jesus is not good enough on his own. He’s got to be supplemented by something else, in this case, the divine forces, so you’re either downgrading Jesus and Christianity or you’re taking the heart out of Reiki.

LAWTON: The bishops’ document is not a mandate, and local dioceses may implement it as they choose. But Reiki supporters say it’s already had a chilling effect. Many Catholic institutions, including hospitals and retreat centers, are no longer offering Reiki, and most nuns are reluctant to speak publicly about their use of Reiki.

SCHMIDT: Some people, I think, find comfort in the perceived security of a black and white theology, and Reiki doesn’t fit within that black and white theology, and so in those kinds of situations there tends to be judgment, there tends to be fear, there tends to be reaction.

LAWTON: Schmidt says she’s sad the bishops would oppose something that has meant so much to her spiritually.

SCHMIDT: I see Reiki as being life-giving. It definitely flows out of my relationship with God. It’s drawing me closer in my relationship with God. I certainly have grown in my awe and wonder over how God can work in the world.

LAWTON: But Church leaders say they believe Reiki is spiritually dangerous.

WEINANDY: I want to stick with Jesus. I don’t want to open myself up to other forces that may be, you know, supernatural in some sense but not of God. I think it’s a risky business to be playing around with this sort of thing.

LAWTON: While the theological debates continue, the National Institutes of Health has funded a study on the possible health effects of Reiki.

]]>Thomas J. Reese, SJ, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center, talks about white and Hispanic Catholic voters and suggests how President Obama’s own biography could help him connect with ethnic Catholics.

]]>As the US Senate wrestles with health care reform legislation, coverage of abortion services remains a controversial issue. After strong pressure from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and several groups of religious conservatives, the House of Representatives passed the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would bar a new government-run insurance plan from covering abortions. At this week’s annual fall meeting (November 16-18), Cardinal Francis George, president of the bishops’ conference, defended his church’s lobbying on the issue. Meanwhile, at a November 16 news conference, Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, criticized the bishops’ efforts and joined other faith leaders in launching a lobbying campaign in favor of abortion coverage. (Cardinal George footage provided by Telecare)